This page is a compendium of items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, damnable prevarications, rants and amusing anecdotes - about LAUSD and/or public education that didn't - or haven't yet - made it into the "real" 4LAKids blog and weekly e-newsletter at http://www.4LAKids.blogspot.com . 4LAKidsNews will be updated at arbitrary random intervals.

Saturday, January 30, 2016

January 27, 2016 | As they presented oral arguments
before an appellate court Wednesday, attorneys in a high-profile lawsuit hoped
that justices will allow them to go to trial to prove that by inadequately
funding public schools the state is violating California students’ constitutional
right to a quality education.

The three justices on the 1st District Court of Appeal in
San Francisco must rule within the next 90 days on whether to overturn a ruling
by an Alameda County Superior Court judge who dismissed the case, Robles-Wong
v. California, on grounds that there’s no constitutional right to an adequately
funded education. In that ruling, Judge Steven Brick said the Legislature has
the right to set funding levels as it chooses.

The case consolidates two lawsuits filed in 2010 —
Campaign for Quality Education v. California and the Robles-Wong case.

In a session lasting more than an hour, justices on the
court focused on the issue in the lawsuits’ core claim, that insufficient
funding levels are denying children their constitutional right to an education
that prepares them to participate fully in economic and civil life.

The justices focused on the key idea of the concept of
quality, while the attorney for the state, Joshua Sondheimer, said the state
does not oversee quality.

Steven Mayer, an attorney for the plaintiffs in
Robles-Wong, told the justices that the state Supreme Court has held that
education is a constitutional right in the state, “and a violation of that
right has occurred.”

The Legislature defines quality education in establishing
high academic standards but it hasn’t provided enough funding so that all
students can meet those standards, Mayer said.

While a ruling by the three justices won’t be issued for
several weeks, it could be groundbreaking if the justices decide that a quality
education is constitutionally guaranteed.

Justice Peter Siggins acknowledged that under the state’s
current system there is “a disparity of opportunity” for students.

Mayer said that a minimal level of state funding, which
Proposition 98 guarantees, doesn’t ensure quality education.

“We can’t have a system where half the students are not
proficient,” Mayer argued, and pointed out that California students
consistently rank near the bottom of the nation in academic performance. Furthermore,
more funding, not simply redistributing funding, is needed, he added.

Sondheimer argued that there is “no qualitative level for
education in the state Constitution.”

That prompted Justice Martin Jenkins to assert that
“there must be a qualitative element in every classroom.”

Plaintiffs in the Robles case are the California School
Boards Association, the California State PTA, the association of California
School Administrators, the California Teachers Association, the Youth &
Education Law Project at Stanford Law School and 60 individuals, including the
lead plaintiff, Maya Robles-Wong, who was a junior at Alameda High School when
the suits were filed. The Campaign for Quality Education suit was filed by
Public Advocates Inc., which represented five nonprofits serving low-income,
minority families.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Steven Brick
dismissed both lawsuits in December 2011. In his rulings, Brick acknowledged
students’ fundamental right to an education, but he said the state Constitution
does not require the Legislature to fund public education at a specific level.
The plaintiffs appealed the decision to the state appeals court in San
Francisco, and the court combined the two lawsuits into one.

The new figures updated the ones based on decade-old
published studies, which the association submitted as evidence in the Robles
case.

The new report asserts that the $64 billion that Gov.
Jerry Brown proposes to spend on K-12 schools in the 2016-2017 school year to
implement the Common Core, other state standards and to fulfill the eight
priorities of the Local Control Funding Formula, would fall tens of billions of
dollars short of what is needed for the state to ensure that every child has
access to quality learning.